The Price
by suerum
Summary: A coda oneshot, written in response to the falling out between Jason and Spinelli over Jason's single minded pursuit of Claudia and her culpability in Michael's shooting.


A/N: I have no rights to the characters represented in this story

The Price

He didn't understand it, he simply didn't. He had done what he always did, he had prevailed. There had been doubters, those who said 'what if' or 'maybe' and he had plowed them under, had ridden roughshod over them, had yelled…That last, he yelled at him a lot, always had, practically from the moment he moved in with him, with them. The yelling was almost ritualistic, something specific between the two of them. It was always understood though, underneath it all, without making an overt statement that it was a case of, 'You get that I care right? You know what you mean to me?' The invariably returned answer was an unadorned 'yes'.

So that is what he didn't get, totally couldn't comprehend what was so different about this time. Sure he was furious, the tendons in his neck corded, his fists clenched reflexively and he was wearing his famous stone cold stare. So, what? The guy he was using it on was the same one who had patented the term, he could take it, always had, always would, right? Because that was deal, Jason asked, Spinelli complied. Then whenever he lost his temper, Spinelli took it on, absorbed his rage, always coming back to him without referencing it. Afterward, everything was just the way it had always been, would always be…Except that this time it wasn't.

At first Jason hadn't even noticed. He was too busy running around proving he was right. Somehow this situation had morphed into whether or not he was right rather then whether or not Claudia was guilty. She was of course, he knew it in his gut and when in the last several decades had it steered him wrong, at least when it mattered? Yet, they looked at him-Sam, Sonny, even Michael-as though to say, 'what's the big deal?' He wanted to shake them all, didn't they get it? It was a huge deal.

Sonny had made a mistake taking Michael to that warehouse without guards. Yet, okay, he was Sonny, arrogant and unrepentant and Jason eventually let him off the hook. Just because Jason perennially bathed in grief didn't mean he could expect the same from Sonny or even Carly.

Ian Devlin, well, he was taken care of and Jason hadn't even had to hide his handiwork on that one. Nope when you kill the scum of the earth because they are holding the police commissioner's daughter at knifepoint you pretty much get a free pass for it.

Then there was Jerry Jax. Jason's hate for him was like corrosive acid inexorably eating away at his brain and the next time they met he was going to put him down like a mad dog. He was done watching him survive car explosions and building collapses and treating Sam like his own personal sex slave. Jerry was the real definition of a walking dead man but that was still merely business mixed in with a hell of a lot of anticipatory pleasure.

Claudia though, he wasn't sure what he hated the most about her. The possibilities were endless and extremely difficult to quantify. Maybe it all stemmed from that spark of contempt which was in her eye ever since the once upon a time in their intertwined lives when she tried it on with Jason and he summarily rejected her. He knew she married Sonny to protect herself, became pregnant for the same reason and then cried crocodile tears when she lost the baby. Again, once again, after the miscarriage, the fucking bitch had dared to put Michael, his golden Michael, into danger by bringing that psychopath Jerry Jax back into the equation. The result of her unconsidered actions was to make Jason about as mad and as a stable as a sidewinder. He wanted her dead, every breath she took contaminated the actual air of his city when she breathed it back out.

Sam understood, she was quietly worried but she stayed by his side, even helped him. Not Spinelli though, he only worked on the task with reluctance. Since day one when Jason asked for his help on this case he was obdurate, placing obstacles in his way, consistently claiming that 'Vixenella' wasn't the she hound from hell which is how Jason appeared to view her. C'mon, had the kid even looked at the nickname he bestowed upon her? Maybe she occasionally was kind, though Jason thought probably never without an agenda, but that was just a momentary abeyance of her inner black widow spider.

On the other hand, Johnny's resistance to Jason's one man crusade to bring Claudia down, now that he got, Jason always got loyalty. It was the solitary commandment that defined his universe,

Sonny instilled that overriding concept in him from year one of his existence as Jason Morgan. Then in turn, all these decades later, he thought, really thought, in Spinelli he had found his very own Jason. He believed that with him it would be possible to replicate the single most life altering relationship of his second life, just in the opposite direction. He felt the same communion between them, the brotherhood he and Sonny shared. He even secretly got off on the more new age approach between them, the kid's goofiness, his unadulterated hero worship, the whole Master-grasshopper thing with Stone Cold kept for everyday use. He never questioned Spinelli's loyalty, the way Sonny would query his. He just accepted it as being eternal, the cornerstone of what they were to one another.

Hell, compared to Sonny he was lenient. He accepted the boy's quirks, his awkwardness. He just mentored him, reined him when necessary and let him ramble when he needed. He knew he wouldn't ever be a soldier and he didn't want him to be. He wanted better things for Spinelli than he did for himself-safety, love, maybe children someday in the future. All he wanted in return was compliance, his swift fingers on a computer keyboard and unswerving loyalty. He let him question, he let him engage in dialogues. Spinelli hadn't paid nearly the dues Jason had to under Sonny's tutelage before he was given the right to express an opinion. No, he fought to get to that place where Sonny viewed him as something close to an equal and they were both bruised and battered by those exchanges. Yet, he always held two concepts in thrall to Sonny -respect and loyalty. Really, when you came right down to it, wasn't the one entirely predicated on the other?

So, when Jason was so close, at a fever pitch and ready to close the case on Claudia, that was when Spinelli's tender conscience decided to go on strike. At a moment when Jason needed his technical expertise more then ever, when he asked him to take a small step on a pathway away from what Spinelli felt comfortable with but that Jason required of him, what did he do? He refused, that's what. He said Jason wasn't ethical. Goddamn, fucking little punk said he wasn't ethical when in point of fact for this same little brat he had compromised the most sacred ethic in the mobster's book. He had snitched on Anthony Zacchara for him.

Jason saw red, convenient righteousness didn't meld with his absolute knowledge of Claudia's culpability in Michael's shooting. If he had actually been Sonny he would have planted his fist directly in Spinelli's sanctimonious face. Yet, instead, he gathered the tattered shreds of control he still possessed over his temper and in icy tones told him to leave. That was it, that was all, that was nothing. The kid believed he belonged in the mob. Well, he better think again, if he thought this had been any kind of rough.

At least he did leave, but then Jason couldn't understand why it was so difficult to breathe after the door closed quietly, the abandoned laptop still residing passively on the coffee table. He started to say, 'I'm sorry…" What the other words might have been he wasn't sure and wouldn't ever know because Sam forestalled him. She was soft spoken and supportive, her words warm with concern and her actions full of love. She was smart enough not to try and defend one goddamned word out Spinelli's mouth beyond asking what Jason would do if he were wrong. He wasn't offended though because he knew he wasn't wrong. Unlike Spinelli, she simply quelled her doubts and got on with the program which was simple, to catch Claudia once and for all.

They had done it too, found the incriminating CD with Claudia's distinctive tones on it ordering the hit on Sonny. That hit missed its target and instead inadvertently stole a year from Michael's life and in the process caused Carly, Jason and-he grudgingly supposed-Sonny to dwell in an unendurable state of agony. For an instant, a brief flare of self satisfaction flashed across his mind as he envisioned Spinelli's inevitable apology. The way he would tilt his head down at the carpet, his bangs overhanging his eyes, saying he should never have doubted Stone Cold and he would endeavor to never again follow such a perilously fraught path as to question either his Master's motives or his methods. He could actually hear the Spinelli speak in his brain which meant he'd been spending too much time around the kid but no matter, things would soon be back to normal. He could afford to be magnanimous this once, as long as Spinelli clearly comprehended his mistake and would sincerely repent it then Jason would of course forgive him.

Anyway, that was going to have to be a little pleasure temporarily denied, an event made all the sweeter by being anticipated. It would be something to round out the whole experience of watching Claudia's destruction as Sonny, Carly and everyone else, with the expected exception of Johnny, turned on her en masse. Jason could taste victory on his tongue and it was smoky just like the fires of hell that would face Claudia after he or Sonny, he wasn't picky, sent her to everlasting damnation. If he was really lucky, when he himself ended up down there, maybe he would be allowed to turn the spit with her spinning on it eviscerated and fully conscious as she snarled out her never ending pain and fury.

It took time, days before everything fell into place. He didn't really mind though his body thrummed with contained ferocity as he thought about the trap that would spring, that would ensnare Vixenella once and for all. Cunning little fox that she was, this time he would cut off her tail and swipe its blooded end across Michael's forehead as payback for everything she had put him through, was still putting him through with his damaged memory and uncertain temper.

Eventually Sonny and his wife came back. Jason smiled grimly as he contemplated how the bile would rise up in Sonny's throat when he realized that a demon had lain in his bed all these months. Really, he couldn't help but think a higher force had decided to end that abomination of a pregnancy. He went to him as soon as he was alerted to the happy couple's return by Max. He waved away Sonny's greetings, and placed the CD directly into the stereo. Claudia was out, acquiring a costume for the Halloween themed birthday party Sonny was planning to throw for her.

Jason watched with satisfaction while Sonny's face turned grey and his eyes became black and soulless. He gritted out the words, 'the bitch is dead!' It was almost worth the long, bleak journey, the bullet holes, the concussion, even the bitter knowledge that there were limits to Spinelli's loyalty to him but never his own to Michael. Jason's world was set to right the instant Sonny uttered those four words which sealed Claudia's death warrant.

Except it hadn't. Oh, Claudia was dead all right. There was just one small problem. Jason hadn't killed her, nor had Sonny. He knew it for a fact because she was out on the terrace when she was shot and he was inside standing next to Sonny, Carly and Michael. Sonny had a plan, he always did, something much more complex and devious than Jason would have come up with but he was okay with that. He didn't mind handing the micromanaging of retribution over to Sonny.

Sonny was planning to reveal her guilt at the party by playing the incriminating CD to the guests. It was going to be his very special birthday gift to her. Then he wanted her to stew and just when she was going to start breathing again, thinking that he was going to let her live out of some chivalric impulse that's when Sonny wanted Jason to do it, to kill her. His only stipulation was that he needed to be there when it happened. He wanted her to see his face, to spit on her corpse. Jason wasn't crazy about the theatrics and sooner would have been better in his book but he was just so relieved that Sonny was finally onboard with the revenge plan that he wasn't going to quibble about the precise details involved. He knew her body would never be found and the time lapse between the reveal and Claudia's execution would actually work in their favor. They would just spread the story around that Claudia had left town of her own free will.

Thus, Jason wasn't prepared for the distinctive sound of a high powered rifle crack echoing that night from outside Sonny's living room. There were several shots, two of which came crashing through the French doors and everyone dove for the floor. If there was one thing to be said for the citizenry of Port Charles it was that they had lightning fast reflexes developed from years of social situations being continually disrupted by targeted acts of violence. He had an arm each covering Michael and Carly and he quickly scanned the room for the placement of others he cared about-Sam, Morgan and Spinelli. There was a funny little hitch in his chest as he registered that while Maxie was there, Spinelli wasn't. He hadn't seen the kid in over a week. Maxie was giving him the evil eye earlier in the evening and so he assumed he had taken shelter with her.

'Have to fix that' was the quick reminder thought which flashed through his mind before he turned icy cold and focused on getting out to the terrace to survey the scene. Claudia lay in an ungainly sprawl amongst silver dappled shadows thrown by moon ragged clouds wildly scudding overhead. Her face was obliterated while rapidly congealing blood formed an unidentifiable Rorschach pattern on the flagstone around her. It was over and he felt nothing but a cheated disappointment. "Son of a bitch!" he railed at the indifferent sky. "This was mine, this was fucking mine!"

The police came too late, too laggardly as they looked with defeated eyes at the scene of another Port Charles mob homicide that would end up in the overflowing file marked 'unsolved cases'. Jason was questioned, Sonny was questioned, Max and every Corinthos associate in the room was questioned-all to no avail. After all, when the city's Defense Attorney could attest to their presence at the time bullets went flying there really wasn't much of a case to be made. Besides, everyone knew neither Jason nor Sonny would have endorsed a hit in a crowded room where women and children could just as easily have been killed as the actual victim.

Grimfaced, Sonny and Jason consulted after everyone left. The living room was a trashed wreck, the typical remnants of a Port Charles good time. "Anthony Zacchara!" Sonny hissed out the name, furious that his blood lust had to go unsatiated.

Jason nodded in weary agreement, running his hand across his brow. He'd sent Sam home, told her he'd see her the next day. "Yeah," he agreed with a sigh, "More than likely, he hated her almost as much as we did." For him it was over, Claudia was dead and he could live with the how of it. Still, he felt obliged to offer up a bone to console Sonny, "I'll have Spinelli check into…" He ended abruptly, aware of Sonny's puzzled eyes focused on him. "I'll look into it," he concluded lamely, not caring to mention the still sore breach to his own erstwhile mentor. He couldn't bear to see the gleam of satisfaction in those black eyes if he thought the hacker he despised was out of Jason's orbit for good.

'Not if I can help it,' Jason thought to himself with renewed determination as he entered the empty penthouse. At first he hadn't noticed Spinelli's absence, after all, these days Sam was usually around. The when she wasn't he rather enjoyed not having to hear Spinelli chatter on at him endlessly or put up with Maxie's snide remarks in her high pitched chipmunk voice. Now though as he turned the handle to his bedroom he caught himself looking down the hallway, hoping against hope that Spinelli would pop out of his pink bedroom and intone 'Greetings, Stone Cold!' Who would ever have guessed he missed being called Stone Cold, for God's sake!

Shaking his head irritably, he got ready for bed. Flipping back the covers he muttered to himself, "I'll bring him home tomorrow." He snorted as he added, "Stupid kid!"

It was late when he finally fell asleep and the sun was bright in his bedroom the next morning when Jason opened his eyes. Groaning, he stumbled his way into the bathroom and a hot shower. It wasn't until the first sips of black coffee began to clear away the fuzziness of his brain that he remembered the night before. Claudia was dead. He had done what he set out to do, proven her guilt in Michael's shooting and now the situation was resolved the way a vendetta ought to be. He didn't feel better though, it didn't make any material difference. Her death couldn't bring Michael his missing year back or help him cope with his ongoing deficits from the injury. Most of all, he was beginning to think that outing Claudia had cost him something he wasn't willing to pay-Spinelli.

Standing outside the apartment door, Jason rubbed his cheek uncertainly. Usually he just stepped forward and did whatever needed to be done but now he hesitated, was nervous, was frightened to think that he might fail, that Spinelli might reject him. He didn't have any plan B if that happened. All he had was this, him showing up and willing to try again, to…apologize if need be. He could do this, he raised his hand to knock on the apartment door all the while trying not to dwell on what it meant that he had waited and watched until he saw Maxie leave for work, she seemed to be running late like everyone else this morning. If he couldn't deal with one ninety pound spitfire blonde who was mostly peripheral to him what did that mean about how he was going to dredge up enough persuasive ability to get Spinelli to forgive him? He took a deep breath and knocked.

"Come in, it's open," it was Lulu shouting through the closed door.

Jason opened the door and looked in, feeling tentative and alien as he looked around this apartment which, as proclaimed by every artifact in evidence, was so obviously feminine. "Jason," Lulu's voice was sharp with disdain as she spoke from the sofa where she sat looking over a fashion magazine while she simultaneously texted, "I was wondering when you would show up."

"Didn't you go to work with Maxie?" Jason was the prince of non communication who didn't even begin to know how to make small chat and here he was being as inane as possible. He knew he was just trying to put off the inevitable.

"Didn't feel well, overindulged last night at that charming party of Sonny's and so I am working from home." Lulu spoke dryly, her concentration divided three ways. Suddenly she looked up at him, her eyes filled with unconcealed dislike but she didn't say anything. It was clear she wasn't going to help this awkward encounter along in any way.

"Spinelli," his throat was dry and now that he could potentially see him at any moment, his palms were sweaty and his heart was beating rapidly in his chest. "Is he here?"

"Nope,' Lulu responded airily, deliberately being cruel as she left him hanging, making him wonder if that was all he was going to get. "He took a room over at Jake's a couple of days ago." She cocked her head, her eyes glittering with hostility as she considered him, examining him as though he was a specimen of something disgusting found on the bottom of her shoe. "He didn't deserve it, none of it." She spoke softly, evenly but her contempt was clear and fully warranted.

"I know," he replied as he turned to leave.

Jason strode into Jake's confident of what he was going to do. Before he had worried about extricating Spinelli from living with Maxie but who in their right mind would choose a room over a seedy bar to what he had waiting for him back at the penthouse? He was just starting to mount the first step of the flight of stairs leading to the upper floor, when Coleman's voice floated out across the dark room toward him, "He's not there."

"I was told he had a room here, do you know where he is?" Jason couldn't see Coleman's face in the dimness but he could feel the waves of animosity snaking out toward him. Fine by him, everybody in the whole goddamn town could hate him as long as Spinelli came home with him.

"Yeah, he did but he's gone now." The voice was laconic, the information sparse.

It was on the tip of Jason's tongue to ask with ill concealed impatience 'gone where?' when it hit him like a physical blow to his solar plexus. Coleman didn't mean that Spinelli was out getting lunch at Kelly's or down at the McCall and Jackal office. He meant that he was gone as in no longer in Port Charles.

Jason took a step back, looking around the deserted bar in a daze. He didn't know why he was so shocked, after all he had told him to leave and that is exactly what he had done, his ever obedient grasshopper to the very end. Fuck it all, he had even looked it up once, years ago, somewhere around the twentieth time or so the kid had called him Master. He had surreptiously logged onto the hacker's unattended laptop and using Google for the first and close to only time had put the two words in as a search term. It turned out it was from some new age television show all the way back in the seventies. It was a weird combination of west meets east, an amalgam full of Zen fortune cookie wisdom and kick ass karate moves. Jason hadn't known whether to be embarrassed or flattered.

Turns out Spinelli had been wrong though, it was a rare occurrence but it happened. He wasn't a grasshopper at all. No, it was a cricket that lived for three years down the hall from Jason in the regrettably pink, regrettably empty room and now that he had moved out Jason had lost everything-his luck, his conscience and most of all his family.

Turning Jason trudged over to the bar and sat down. Hunched over and bereft he looked like a hellish version of a Hopper painting, all angles and a total absence of light. Without a word, Coleman poured him a shot and popped the cap on a bottle of beer. He would keep them coming but there was no way he was going to talk to the son of a bitch. He didn't intend to try and alleviate one iota of his richly earned misery. Bad enough he had to have a mob enforcer ensconced at his bar and likely scaring off his other customers for the rest of the day. If he could choose, he'd much rather have the floppy haired hacker in his place, sad eyes and all. How anyone could do what this bastard had done to such a kind hearted kid was beyond Coleman's understanding. It was like kicking a puppy. Spinelli's heart had been broken and now here was the cause of all that grief sitting like some sort of bad luck totem at his counter while the boy he mourned was out facing a world that he appeared entirely too ill equipped to handle in all its raw, random cruelty.

Jason dimly registered Coleman's adamant disapproval but he didn't care. He reached down into his jeans and pulling out his wallet plunked two hundred dollar bills down on the counter. Then, as an afterthought, he reached back into his jeans and pushed the power switch on his cell phone. He knew it was only a transitory fix, a futile attempt to avoid his world for a while. Jason realized his temporary hideaway wasn't sacrosanct. Soon, in a few hours at the most, someone-Sam, Carly, Michael, or Sonny-was bound to come looking for him, would want him to do or be something for them. The problem was that it wouldn't be the right someone. The only one he wanted to come walking in and sit down next to him at the bar was a dark haired, green eyed boy with a smile that would light the place up in response to the simple act of Coleman slapping down an orange soda in front of him. He ached, literally ached to hear his voice say, "How can the Jackal be of service, Stone Cold?"

Yet, what he wanted more than anything wasn't going to happen. Somehow, through his hubris, his carelessness, a simple everyday event which he had taken totally for granted was suddenly metamorphosed into an unattainable fantasy. Only now, a week after he let his mouth utter things that his heart didn't mean was Jason beginning to register what Spinelli had been trying to say to him that day and the knowledge of it tore at the fabric of his sullied soul. Spinelli's loyalty hadn't been compromised, it was as ever wholly pure but it was when he chose to place it in Jason that he erred. His loyalty had been to an ideal, Spinelli's perceived image of Jason, rather then to the man he truly was. Still, as long as Spinelli had faith in him then it was always possible that gap could have been bridged, that Jason might have some day managed to achieve peace with himself and those around him, perhaps even earning some small degree of redemption.

That fragile thread of hope had severed when Spinelli left him, left Port Charles. He knew Maxie would be furious and would blame him and Jason would let her because she would be right. Still, if he was honest, there was a small part of himself, which he usually ignored and kept buried deep down within him, that reveled in Spinelli's choice, in his freedom from the two of them. At least now Jason could stop worrying about Spinelli being shot or kidnapped or, and even as a hypothetical it caused shivers to run up and down his spine, be killed because of his association with him. He couldn't regret Spinelli's loss of Maxie either. He believed in their love for one another, he really did, but he didn't think it would have lasted. They were too dissimilar and Maxie always but always found a way to sabotage her happiness. Jason was just glad that she wouldn't get the chance to wreck Spinelli's life in the process.

Sighing, he picked up his shot glass and toasted the empty air, ignoring Coleman who was covertly watching him from the shadows. "May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the hollow of his hand." He drained the shot glass in one fierce gulp and as the whisky burned its way down his throat he could hear the distinctive sounds of Claudia's mocking laughter swirling around him. 


End file.
